The American Lawyer has published its "Corporate Scorecard 2003" ranking the top firms in a broad range of transactional categories from IPO's (you guessed it—dead) to bankruptcy (also counter-intuitively quiet) to municipal bond issuance ("who are these guys?").  They provide a narrative summary as well as the full rankings.

Common wisdom has it that the small uptick of M&A deals at the end of the year is precursor to far more robust activity in 2004.  While I'm generally averse to forecasting major trends from minor data points, I actually am optimistic that this is the correct point of view.  Why?

Primarily because most of corporate America will have cleared out its Sarbanes-Oxley underbrush and will be able to look outward and ahead rather than inward and back.